Girls Rule! (8 page)

T
he last week of school had arrived, and Caroline was as sorry as she was glad. Glad because she could put all her energy into planning for the Strawberry Festival; sorry because one of the pleasures of her life was doing anything at all in front of the class.

It didn’t matter if she was only asked to put a problem on the blackboard or read aloud the next two pages of their literature book. She always managed to make it a performance. She never just read from her seat, either; she stood so that everyone could see her. If she knew she was going to do something special on a particular day, she would wear an especially pretty dress to school.

“Crazy with a capital
C
!” the other girls called her, but Caroline didn’t care. They tolerated her because she was a year younger than anyone else, and besides, school would be twice as boring if Caroline Malloy weren’t there to entertain them, and they knew it.

Miss Applebaum finished reading
Hatchet
aloud, and after she closed the book, she said, “Okay, class, here’s a fun project for our last week of school. I want each of you to pick a primitive place anywhere you like in the world. A real wilderness. Research it here at school—you don’t have to do any work at home—and make a list of all the things you would need to survive there for a month. Then write down what you would do first if you were shipwrecked or plane-wrecked at this spot.”

Well
, that’s
certainly an unusual assignment,
Caroline thought.

The teacher went on: “You may work alone or in groups of two or three, and at the end of the week, after you’ve shared your report with the class, we’ll have a survivor party here in the classroom.”

Friends began turning to friends to see who wanted a partner. Caroline tapped Wally on the back with her ruler.

“Wally,” she said, as nicely as she could. “Do you want to be my partner?”

“No,” said Wally.

“I’ll choose anywhere you want. We could even be plane-wrecked in Antarctica.”

“If you go to the South Pole, I’ll go to the North,” said Wally.

“How about Tibet?” asked Caroline.

“If you go to Tibet, I’ll go to the Amazon,” said Wally.

Caroline sighed. Trying to be nice to a Hatford was one of the hardest things she ever did. She rested her chin on her hands, closed her eyes, and thought. She did not want to be cold, so Antarctica was out. She did not want to be hot, either, and she did not want to be in a jungle where lions and insects could eat her alive.

If she was ever in a plane wreck, she wanted to be
found,
she decided, and to be found, she’d need to be seen. For her to be seen, there would have to be open spaces. So Caroline chose the Australian outback.

She spent the afternoon in the library looking at a topographical map of Australia showing the highlands, lowlands, and lakes. At last she chose what appeared to be open land on the edge of a desert next to a lake. Then she looked up temperatures to decide what month she would choose for her plane wreck. She allowed herself to salvage a raincoat, a jug of water, and some apples from the wreck. After that, she put her mind to being rescued.

Wally had walked behind her chair in the library, she knew, and had seen her studying the map of Australia. She was sure that was why he picked the North Pole. He was sitting across from her now at a library
table because all the other chairs were taken, and he was reading a short book about Robert E. Peary.

“Wally,” she said softly, “if you were searching for me in Australia, what would I need to do for you to find me?”

“Come hopping by on a kangaroo,” Wally said without even looking up.

It was
especially
hard to be nice to a Hatford when he wouldn’t take you seriously, Caroline decided.

“If you were plane-wrecked at the North Pole,
I’d
come and rescue
you,
” she said as sweetly as possible. But Wally didn’t answer, and Caroline knew she would get no help from him. She decided that if her plane was too smashed up to use for shelter, she would use her raincoat to make herself a tent. The real problem was how to let rescuers know where she was.

First she would gather rocks from the riverbank to spell out her name,
Caroline Lenore Malloy
. If she was a Broadway actress when the plane went down, think what the newspaper headlines would say when a plane spotted her name spelled out in rocks!

When she tried to figure out how many rocks it would take to spell her name in big letters—
big
rocks, at least as large as footballs—she decided to leave off her middle name. And when she realized how many trips to the riverbank it would take to spell out her first name, she decided she would just go with the word
HELP!

There was every chance, however, that if her plane went down in Australia, an Aborigine would see her.
He would tell someone else, and that person would tell another, until a whole tribe of Australian Aborigines would travel through the outback to see her. And she knew what
that
would be: an audience.

And once she had an audience, she would sing every song she’d ever learned, tell every story she’d ever heard, act out every part she’d ever played. And
then,
perhaps, the natives would tell the outside world where she was.

It was exhausting, doing all this planning, and by the time Caroline started home that afternoon with the others, she felt as though she had been carrying rocks from a riverbank all day long.

Wally told his brothers about the assignment.

“You’re lucky!” Josh said. You know what
we
have to do, just because it’s our last year in this school?
We
have to pick up trash on the playground, paint the seesaws, collect all the volleyballs and get them back to the right rooms, clean out the supply cupboard, wash the blackboard, and help check in books at the library.”

“No graduation ceremony?” Caroline asked. She could not imagine leaving elementary school for junior high without a ceremony of some sort.

“We get our class picture in the newspaper, that’s all,” said Josh. “They always print a sixth-grade graduation picture along with all the stuff the class did for the school before they left.”

That was a ceremony? Caroline wondered. If all they got in Buckman was a picture in the newspaper,
she would arrange to be in the very center of the front row.

“So where are
you
going to be plane-wrecked, Caroline?” Eddie asked as the seven kids made their way down the sidewalk on College Avenue.

“The Australian outback,” said Caroline. “I’m going to sing and dance and attract the attention of the Aborigines, and if that doesn’t get me rescued, I’ll send up smoke signals.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.” Jake grinned.

“
I
don’t have to clean out a supply cupboard or be in a plane crash or
any
thing!” said Peter. “
Our
class is going to have a picnic out under the trees and make our own ice cream.”

Caroline almost wished she hadn’t been moved up a grade. Not that she would have been in Peter’s class, but it seemed that the younger you were in school, the more fun you could have. She was just about to say so when she stopped walking and said, “Hey! Isn’t that Mom way down the street?”

Her sisters shielded their eyes from the June sun. “Sure looks like it,” Eddie answered. “Is she coming out of your house, Jake?”

“No, she’s coming out of the house next door,” he said. “The Corbys’.”

“She’s heading for the footbridge,” said Caroline. “Maybe she was out collecting money for us so we can all be in the parade.”

“Dream on,” said Eddie.

Josh must have been in an especially good mood,
because when they reached the Hatford house, he said to the girls, “Anybody want some lemonade? We made a couple jugs of it over the weekend.”

“Sure,” said Beth. “We’ll have a glass before we go home.”

If any one of the Hatfords would miss them if they moved back to Ohio, Caroline thought, it would be Josh. Next to Peter, of course. And Josh would miss Beth most of all, she was sure of it.

They all trooped inside. As always, they had barely got the screen door closed behind them when the phone rang.

“That’ll be Mom,” said Wally, and picked it up. “We just walked in the door, Mom, and the kitchen’s full of crazy people,” he said into the phone, looking at the Malloy sisters sitting around the table.

Caroline stared.

Wally listened for a minute, then said, “Yes, there’s a key on the table….” And suddenly he started to yell: “What?” And then, after another pause, he yelled
“What?”
again, even more loudly. Everyone turned to stare this time. And then Wally held the phone out away from his ear so the others could hear too.

“Now, why should that upset you?” Mrs. Hatford was saying. “All I said was that if our neighbors aren’t home when Mrs. Malloy comes by, she’ll stop over here for their key and you’re to give it to her. She’s thinking about renting the house next door if they stay in Buckman.”

Ten
Stunned

W
ally silently followed the others out onto the porch to stare at the house next door. He could see someone moving around inside, so the Corbys had been home after all to let Mrs. Malloy in. It was a big house, with a living room that stretched from one side to the other. He had known the Corbys were planning to move, but he hadn’t thought they were going this soon.

He looked at his brothers in horror, then at the Malloy girls. For once he couldn’t tell what they were thinking: they weren’t frowning; they weren’t smiling. Maybe, like him, they were in shock!

“Well,” Eddie said at last, “thanks for the lemonade.” Then she and Beth and Caroline went down the
steps, crossed the road, and started across the foot bridge over the Buckman River.

“This can’t be happening!” Wally said at last.

Jake was frantic. “If the Malloys move in next door, we are toast!” he cried.

“Dead meat!” said Josh.

“Roadkill!” added Wally.

“It will be horrible,” said Jake.

“Terrible!” said Josh, all trace of fondness for the girls gone in a flash.

Peter was eating a handful of crackers and stopped to study his brothers. “Why?” he asked. “What’s the matter with the Malloys moving in next door?
I
think it would be nice.”

Jake and Josh and Wally looked at each other, then at Peter.

“Peter, go in the house,” Jake told him.

“Why?”

“Because I think your favorite show’s on,” said Jake.

“No, it’s not!” said Peter.

“Okay, then. Because you can play my new video game if you do,” said Jake.

“Okay!” said Peter happily. He went indoors, and soon the sounds of monsters and aliens filled the air.

“
Look
at it!” Jake said again, turning toward the house next to them. “It’s got six windows on the side facing us!"

“And I’ll bet all three of the ones on top belong to girls’ bedrooms if the Malloys move in,” said Josh.

“They’ll see us in our pajamas!” Jake choked.

“They’ll see us in our underwear!” Josh gulped.

“They might even see us in the bathtub!” cried Wally. “We’ll have to keep our blinds down all the time and never ever let sunlight in our rooms. They’ll know everything we ever do.”

“When Dad gets mad and yells at us, they’ll hear every word,” said Jake.

“If one of us has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they’ll see the light come on and they’ll know who it is!” said Josh.

They sank down on the glider facing the house next door.

“What are we going to do?” Josh said. “This is worse than having them living in the Bensons’ house.”

“There’s only one thing
to
do,” said Jake. “We’ve got to make sure the Malloys don’t rent it—that they move somewhere else.”

Josh began pushing against the floor with his feet. The glider moved jerkily back and forth. “Yeah? How are we supposed to do that?” he said. “Sit out here with a shotgun?”

“We have to make sure they don’t
want
to rent it,” Jake said.